Albert Brooks
Albert Brooks
Albert Lawrence Brooksis an American actor, filmmaker and comedian. He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for 1987's Broadcast News. His voice acting credits include Marlin in Finding Nemoand Finding Dory, and recurring guest voices for The Simpsons, including Russ Cargill in The Simpsons Movie. Additionally, he has directed, written, and starred in several comedy films, such as Modern Romance, Lost in America, and Defending Your Lifeand is the author of 2030: The Real Story of What...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth22 July 1947
CityBeverly Hills, CA
CountryUnited States of America
You make friends with older people and you always feel young no matter what.
All improv turns into anger. All comedy improv basically turns into anger, because that's all people know how to do when they're improvising. If you notice shows that are improvising are generally people yelling at each other.
When I audition, I understand what it takes and the insecurities that come with it. If I do anything, I put actors at ease. I used to tell directors who weren't actors, the best thing they could do was take an acting class for a couple of months. Just to understand.
If you want to be a writer, just write. There's no magic to it.
What naturally stops you making the film is there is no more money in the budget. That's really what it is. If you had an unlimited budget, if you were a billionaire and you financed your own movies, then you can either date, because you can sit in an editing room for six years, like Howard Hughes, and never finish anything.
I was in Kashmir last weekend. Went to visit one of my sweaters.
It's fear. Fear is like a giant fog. It sits on your brain and blocks everything. Real feeling, true happiness, real joy, they can't get through that fog. But you lift it and buddy you're in for the ride of your life.
When I was younger, I wasn't concentrating on good days. I was managing a career and trying to have a good year. It would always 'lead' to something, which never leads to anything except death, where everything leads to. And then as I got older, and then I had my kids and everything, I began to appreciate a great Wednesday.
When we spoke, he told me, 'The Newsweek thing has changed the world.' And I said, 'Wasn't it 9/11 that changed the world?' But Michael said he just didn't want to take a chance.
Listen, there are some movies that are set in stone and the writer or the director does not want to change, but I've never worked on a movie, including my own, that didn't take advantage of a rehearsal process.
I had a very wise person tell me that he thinks marriage, when you're younger, you keep thinking you can fix things. That's what people do. And you can't really fix anything. It shouldn't be a massive difficult thing every day. Life's difficult enough.
By the way, movies are like sporting events in that you're as good as the movie you're in. You can sit in a room for 20 years and go do a movie and you can just kill in it and you move to the head of the line again. By the same token, you can do five movies a year and if they're dreck, it's nothing.
My mom was a professional. My dad and mom met each other in a movie called 'New Faces of 1937.' My mom went under the name Thelma Leeds, and she did a few movies, and she was really a great singer, and when she married my dad and started to have a family, she sang at parties.
Even if you didn't see the movie, you'd see two words you'd never seen put together before - comedy and Muslim. Comedy is friendly - it's the least offensive word in our language.